Dee McLachlan’s controversial new comedy 10terrorists had its debut screening on Thursday night at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and while the film has been mostly accepted by audiences, it has been faced with its fair share of naysayers.
“We had one person walk out at a test screening and fill in their form saying the film should never have been made.”, recalls McLachlan.
10terrorists follows a Hollywood producer as he sets up the most extreme reality show to date – Amateur Master Terrorist. Borrowing from other popular reality shows, Amateur Master Terrorist consists of segments such as Armed Apprentice, Queer Spy for the Terrorist Guy, Blasterchef and So You Want To Be A Terrorist!.
“It started off as a script called Terry and Isim and was about Guantanamo Bay. Then that fell through because Harold and Kumar came along and Bush got voted out. But the idea shifted and turning into a morphing reality show with terrorists," explains McLachlan.
The filmmaker is no stranger to controversial ideas. Her last film was the IF award-winning drama The Jammed, a story about human trafficking. On pushing boundaries, McLachlan says: “You always try to push a little further, and sometimes you think you’ve gone too far, but then other times you think you haven’t gone far enough. It’s all about playing with those boundaries.”
For 10terrorists, McLachlan put aside her serious approach and decided to venture into the realm of absurdist comedy. “Comedy allows you to venture into areas where you can’t otherwise venture. It allows you to look at material that would otherwise be too hard to look at.”
With such an offbeat film, producer Andrea Buck realised that the marketing had to be equally offbeat. As such, they decided to enter the film not specifically into film festivals, but into comedy festivals. The film was accepted into the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and it was recently selected for the LA comedy festival.
“When we made The Jammed, we knew its audience from the outset. It was a socially aware, middle range female audience. It was made for cinemagoers. With 10terrorists though, the audience is a little bit scattered, and is a much more mainstream audience," says Buck.
The film is currently showing as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, and will be released theatrically in the near future through distributor Titan View.